UNHELPFUL HELP

Have you ever tried to help someone and then discovered your help wasn't appropriate?  I have.

                  I had a fascinating discussion recently with a social services manager.  She works closely with the school system, foster care, and other government aid agencies. 

                  Here is a story she described.  A child comes to school on a chilly day without a coat.  Somebody notices and flags the student to the school nurse or other administrator.  By the end of the day, the child is called in for interrogation. 

                  "Do you not have a coat?"

                  "If you do, why didn't you wear it?"

                  "Who is at home to make sure you have a coat?"

                  "Can your family afford a coat?"

                  You can see the line of questioning.  Within a day, a case worker shows up at the child's home to continue the sleuthing with adults.  The family indeed is poor and the domestic situation is not ideal.  The parents are divorced and stepdad isn't a saint.  The case worker observes the stepdad knocking down three beers during the visit.

                  Suddenly, Child Protective Services swoops in and extracts the child from an alleged "abusive" home.  The little boy's mother cries as she hugs him goodbye.  He enters the foster care system.  Since a foster family can't be found immediately, he goes to a holding place, where he misses his mom, misses his home (as non-ideal as it may have been), and spends hours with older, hardened misfits.

                  Finally a foster family is found and the boy is placed, but it's not home.  It's not his bed, his toys, his yard.  He didn't know he was a misfit.  He thought this was just his life and he was getting along, perhaps not thriving to full human potential.  But now, branded "poor" and isolated from familiar surroundings, he develops anger, vindictiveness, and self-worth plummets.  He starts failing in school.  He gets into the wrong crowd, starts experimenting with drugs . . . 

                  She said this scenario happens more than you can imagine.  The numbers she shared are startling; even shocking.  And then she said she wonders to her team "are we actually helping in this situation?"  A little bit of love is better than ostracism.  Kids are resilient.  Look at biographies of countless famous people who through hardship became overcomers.  From slaves to immigrants to abject poverty and orphanings, the human spirit can gain victory over difficulty.

                  I've often asked myself what it would take for me to intervene in a family--even a dysfunctional one.  Indeed, who doesn't have a dysfunctional family?  Is a rich spoiled brat better off than a deprived hustler from a single parent situation?  Lots of things in life have a massive subjective component.  What I consider abusive may be just the ticket to bring out creativity in an individual.

                  Child rearing I may not agree with must go a long way before being classified a crime.  Would I intervene if a child is being raped?  Yes.  There are places I would intervene, but they have to be absolutely heinous.  A child not wearing a coat should not upend his life.  That we have so many bureaucrats watching and documenting such things does not make me feel safer; it makes me feel violated.

                  Is protecting kids from anything short of criminal activity a proper role for government?